On the western edge of the town, a deep gully began near the corner of Texas Avenue and Milam Street (across from Jones Hall on one corner and the Chronicle Building on the other) and ran across several blocks to the bayou near Prairie Avenue (Wortham Center is built over it now).

More to the northwest, a ravine cut diagonally from a point near the intersection of Preston Avenue and Milam Street (on the corner of Market Square) to the bayou at Franklin Avenue and  Louisiana Street.

Along the eastern limit of the city at Caroline Street there was a deep ravine that ran down Caroline Street from a point between Prairie Avenue and Preston Avenue to Buffalo Bayou. An 1842 Thomas Flint painting of St. Vincent de Paul Church, at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Caroline Street, clearly depicts this large gully at the lower end of Caroline Street. The gully became narrower after reaching Congress Avenue, and it gradually narrowed so much that it disappeared between Prairie Avenue and Texas Ave.

Dry Gully, as the Caroline Street ravine was known, was a significant topographic feature in the town. Situated on the city limits, Dry Gully provided a slight sense of separation from the commercial area of Houston for the homes of prominent businessmen who, the 1850's, lived on Quality Hill. Quality Hill was a residential area bordering the east side of Caroline Street and the ravine. It extended east from the gully along the high ground along both Franklin Avenue and Congress Avenue to Chenevert Street (an area immediatley north of Astros Field). Bridges crossed the gully at both Franklin Avenue and Congress Avenue.

Along the west side of Dry Gully, the business activity was thriving on Commerce Avenue and the landings of the bayou. John Kennedy, better known for his trading post on Market Square, had a grist mill at Congress Ave and the Dry Gully. The first Roman Catholic Church building in Houston, the Church of St Vincent de Paul, was erected during the summer of 1842 at the southwest corner of Franklin Avenue and Caroline Street at the edge of the deep ravine.

City of Houston, Block 12 (the site of the new Harris County Criminal Justice Center) is bounded by San Jacinto Street, Commerce Avenue, Caroline Street and Franklin Avenue. Excavations done at the site prior to the construction of the building revealed some interesting details of life in Houston during the period before the War Between the States.

Sylvia Routh, a former slave with no apparent means of income, had purchased Lot Number 5 in Block 12. She owned a wood frame house built in 1838 on the site. Her lot backed up to the Dry Gully of Caroline Street and she was less than two blocks from Buffalo Bayou. Oddly, a mysterious brick-lined room had been constructed beneath the house.

According to county records, Mrs. Routh was a well-connected woman. She was protected in the pre-Civil War times, when blacks had few property rights, by high-ranking friends of her dead, common-law husband who was a white man. Records indicate that she owned a fleet of ships that served the docks in Houston. One of her sons died in a shipwreck off the coast of Mexico in 1846.

What is the story behind this woman? What is this brick-lined room doing beneath her home? Why did she have a fleet of merchant ships?

One theory is this: supported by her white colleagues, Sylvia Routh was smuggling for an underground network that delivered slaves from Texas to Mexico during the period from 1836 to 1865. Runaway slaves were hid in the basement room of her house. When a ship was to leave the docks at Allen's Landing, the runaways would make there way out of the basement room into Dry Gully at night. Under the cover of darkness, they could make their way along the dirt paths of the ravine the two blocks to the ship as it stood docked in the Bayou at the foot of Caroline Street. Secure in the vessel, the runaways made their way to Mexico under the guise of a merchant ship.

Horace Taylor, as mayor of Houston after the Civil War, installed a culvert in the gully at Caroline Street and Congress Avenue. Thus began a process that, by the end of the century, would result in the closing and filling of Dry Gully. Today, Caroline Street shows no evidence of the deep ravine that was its lower end. And, the history of this topographic feature is securely buried beneath tons of fill dirt, asphalt and concrete.

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photo: The Harris County Criminal Justice Center now stands on Block 12.